Asynchronous Multiplay Futures for Casual Multiplayer Experience Ian Bogost, Ph.D. Georgia Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT same time, Internet deathmatch like Big budget, high commitment 3D Unreal Tournament (GT Interactive 1999), and MMORPG’s have generated significant free-for-all strategy games like WarCraft III revenues and theoretical bounty. But these (Blizzard 2002) also capitalized on 3D graphics games still alienate most casual players. This and high-speed networking to deliver article offers a promising future for graphically rich, immediately gratifying multiplayer experience, especially casual multiplayer experiences. experience, in the form of asynchronous multiplayer games, or games in which small or All of these games allow synchronous, or large numbers of players play a in simultaneous play, meaning that many players sequence rather than simultaneously. — sometimes tens, sometimes tens of thousands — play the game at the same time. Author Keywords For some games, synchronous play is simply Asynchronous, MMOG, MMORPG, Casual essential; imagine playing an Internet Games, Online Games deathmatch all alone. And the widespread penetration of MMOG’s, both as a gaming activity and as a social meme, has reinforced MMOG’S AND THEIR DISCONTENTS the idea that synchronous play is the With the rising popularity of Massively apotheosis of multiplayer gaming. Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG’s) like EverQuest (Verant 1999) With so much attention focused on and Galaxies ( Online synchronous multiplayer , non- Entertainment 2003), it’s no wonder these are simultaneous, or asynchronous, multiplayer the kinds of games we think of most when gameplay is in decline. And while synchronous confronted with the idea of multiplayer games. multiplay does contribute to a whole Even though Multi-User Dungeons of rich social dynamics, asynchronous (MUD’s) predate games like EverQuest by two multiplay offers a form of casual multiplayer decades (Bartle & Trubshaw 1979), it was the gameplay that could prove equally, if not more sublime allure of graphical MMOG’s that won influential than synchronous play, especially in the genre broad public interest. Graphical the future subgenre of casual MMOG’s. MMOG’s are a relatively new kind of multiplayer game, made possible by a convergence of game technology advances and WHAT IS ASYNCHRONOUS MULTIPLAY? Before discussing specific examples, I want to adoption, including reduced server hardware take some time to explain the characteristics I costs, increased broadband penetration, and think typify the asynchronous multiplay. These market tolerance for subscription-based characteristics are not meant to define such entertainment. (Origin Systems games as exclusive of and opposed to 1997) launched the genre in earnest in 1997, synchronous multiplayer games, or of any with notable followers (NCSoft 1998) other genre of game for that matter. Rather, I in 1998, and EverQuest in 1999. Around the

1 hope these characteristics will help identify the Characteristic 3 traits of asynchronous play styles, which in Breaks between players are the organizing principle of turn may show up in greater and lesser forms asynchronous play in games of all genres.

Characteristic 1 Just as simultaneous, collaborative play is the Asynchronous play supports multiple players playing in hallmark of synchronous multiplayer games sequence, not in tandem like MMORPG’s, sequential, disrupted play is the distinguishing trait of asynchronous multiplayer games. As such, asynchronous The number of players could range from two gameplay relies on meaningful use of these to tens of thousands depending on the game’s disruptions as wellsprings for , just like synchronous play. However, in experiences. This means that good asynchronous play, those players never play asynchronous multiplayer games design these the game at the same time. Instead, players fissures as centerpieces, rather than detours. play in sequence, one after the other. In some asynchronous games, one player immediately Because it is designed principally follows another, in others a duration of time around breaks in gameplay, asynchronous play elapses between players. Play might take place is inherently more casual than synchronous on the same computer, console, or device, or it play — it demands fewer time synchronies might take place on separate devices. between players and allows more flexibility on the part of individual players. Characteristic 2 Likewise, because player obligations Asynchronous play requires some kind of persistent outside the game often engender breaks in state which all players affect, and which in turn affects gameplay, asynchronous play typically orients all players itself as much to the world outside the game as inside the game. In Animal Crossing ( 2002), which I’ll return to in more detail later, In MMOG’s, this is typically called Persistence of the game time is synchronized to real time. If World (POW). POW allows the game world to the player is playing in the winter at night, the continue even when the player is not playing game world will appear dark and snowy. the game. In an MMORPG like EverQuest, players exchange objects, wealth, and engage Characteristic 4 in combat, creating semi-permanent in-game effects that propagate in other players’ Asynchronous play need not be the defining experiences. In games like WarCraft and Unreal, characteristic of a game player damage to buildings might persist even after that player leaves the arena. There are plenty of games that In MMOG’s, POW is maintained on a incorporate synchronous multiplay as an central server or database, so that any player optional extension of the primary game, such who logs into the game will connect to the as GoldenEye 007 (Rare 1997), which tacked a same persistent world. Complete POW is rarer satisfying 2 – 4 player deathmatch mode onto in asynchronous play. Asynchronous a primary, single-player adventure mode. And multiplayer games may rely on online while there are precedents for synchronous connectivity and network storage to persist mutiplay as a supplementary, rather than data about the game, they may rely on local primary design, those precedents are few. One storage methods (such as disc drives and example is the Twingle Tuner feature in The memory cards) or they may rely on distributed Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (Nintendo 2003). storage methods (such as email and SMS). The primary game mode is a single-player played on the Nintendo GameCube

2 console. If the player rescues a character message on a non-blocking socket, program named Twingle, he can make use of this new execution continues, but the calling program friend to give tips and show hidden objects. has to poll the socket to see if any action is But to use Twingle, the player must connect a required. When a program sends a message on GameBoy Advance (GBA) to the secondary an asynchronous socket, program execution controller port. The GBA shows an overhead continues, and polling takes place map of the area the player currently occupies. automatically. Asynchronous sockets A second player, playing in synchrony with the automatically fire events in the calling program primary player, can maneuver Twingle on the when socket actions take place, allowing the GBA, then relate key information to the program author to implement event handlers primary player by voice. for each. In many games that feature In most cases, asynchronous sockets asynchronous multiplay, mutiplay itself is are the most efficient choice for simultaneous optional, an addendum to an entirely adequate play multiplayer games. In a 3D MMOG, a and complete single-player experience. In whole host of events take place at once, from other cases, such as The Howard Dean for Iowa text messages between players to coordinates Game (Persuasive Games 2003) I will discuss for objects to projectile trajectories. In these later, players may not even know that they are cases, performance requirements prescribe engaging multiplayer aspects of the game. asynchronous sockets (for an overview of Asynchronous multiplay can stand as one socket programming for games, see Sikora among many defining features for a game. 2001). That said, the asynchronous qualities Even though asynchronous network of a multiplayer game can provide rich fodder I/O does have a role in facilitating certain for analysis. While the asynchronous types of multiplayer gameplay, asynchronous multiplayer elements of game may facilitate play does not require asynchronous network only a peripheral part of the experience, they I/O. Because asynchronous I/O is mostly may also point to the more interesting cultural, used to manage messages between social, or functional aspects of the game. simultaneous players, such complexity is usually absent from asynchronous play, Corrolary accommodating much simpler networking Asynchronous play isn’t related to asynchronous technologies. network I/O In short, there is no necessary correlation between asynchronous play and This is a rather academic point, but one worth asynchronous data communication. mentioning. Every synchronous play game has to manage complex network operations to pass requests between one or many host PRECEDENTS servers and a large number of client Asynchronous multiplay is far from new computers. These transmissions are usually design technique. One could even argue that managed via direct socket connections every , from Senat to Candy Land, between the computers. In networking jargon, sports an asynchronous multiplayer design. I there are three basic types of socket would argue that board games deemphasize networking: blocking, non-blocking, and the breaks between individual players’ turns. asynchronous. When a program sends a message These gaps are a necessary feature of board on a blocking socket, all other program games, and indeed they may facilitate strategic execution ceases pending a response from the reflection on the state of the board, but such remote computer. When a program sends a matters are a necessary accident of board games, not an outcome-motivated design

3 decision. Otherwise put, the break between advertises play for 2 – 7 players, but gameplay players in board games is a formal, rather than is tuned for 7 players. To play effectively, an elected characteristic. game organizers have to assemble at least six friends for an immense block of time (matches Diplomacy and Play-by-Mail often last five or ten hours). To combat these Nevertheless, there are precedents for challenges, Diplomacy players began relying on asynchronous multiplay in board games, such play-by-mail communities. as Allan B. Calhamer’s Diplomacy (Calhamer 1954). Diplomacy is a strategy war game set in Play-by-mail (often abbreviated PBM) pre-World War I Europe. But whereas most requires each player to send in his or her strategy war games, such as the equally popular moves to a central agent, called a game master. Axis & Allies (Milton Bradley 1984), use dice The game master notifies players of all moves to manage battle outcomes or player in a turn and also adjudicates complex moves movement, Diplomacy relies entirely on direct or disputes. Diplomacy players began to negotiation between players. The game aggregated PBM game reports in centralized eliminates chance entirely. . The website diplom.org still publishes Diplomacy zines five times a year and Each player controls one of the also facilitates play-by-email (PBeM) games. powers of pre-WWI Europe. Instead of taking turns moving players, all players submit moves Because the game relies so heavily on for their units — armies and fleets — at the negotiations between players, secrecy is a same time. Between turns, players are staple of Diplomacy matches. In a face-to-face encouraged to establish or betray partnerships (FTF in PBM jargon) match, each player and agreements. Because each power has witnesses opponents’ conversations, or at least different strengths and weaknesses, the game sees one player take another outside the room relies on negotiation and intrigue. Immensely to discuss strategy. All players write and popular among buffs, legend has submit their moves to a central repository, so it that Diplomacy was the favorite game of both nearby players can easily see when their John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger. opponents decide moves. As such, it proves much more desirable to play Diplomacy asynchronously, each player deciding moves in private and then submitting them to a central adjudicator, unbeknownst to the other players. Technically this sort of play is possible in an FTF game, but PBM play opens up new strategic frontiers; for example, players can continue negotiating with their opponents even after having submitted their moves. More importantly, by increasing the duration of negotiation opportunities in both time and space, these breaks between plays gain significant momentum. Whereas players in an FTF game have to think strategically about

how to go about their negotiations in addition to Figure 1 – Diplomacy® was first sold in 1959 and is the content of those negotiations. In a PBM currently published by ® game, players are free to use normal, everyday The problem with Diplomacy is that it’s means to negotiate and defy their alliances, quite hard to organize a game. The game such as telephone, email, casual meetings at work, and so forth. Gameplay in Diplomacy is

4 inherently asynchronous, but the addition of download the game if necessary, then input his PBM play accentuates the opportunities for own defense and attack moves, and both negotiation, increasing the intrigue and players would watch the animated outcome in therefore the quality of the game. the game interface. There was no strategy in Because Diplomacy is a board game, the the game — it was just a Ro-Sham-Bo of board itself maintains persistence, although chance moves: attack (or defend) high, middle, each player had to manually update their own or low. If you chose to attack high and your board for every move. Provided players have a opponent defended low, you’d score a hit. free card table to leave their game for the weeks at a time, PBM also frees players from the potentially oppressive monotony of an FTF game. Five to ten hours is a long time to do anything in one stretch, and Diplomacy matches often involve a lot of downtime and waiting while other players plan their moves. PBM turns an otherwise intense, strenuous game into a more casual game.

Battlemail, the platform PBeM Even though PBM moves Diplomacy closer to a casual game for history buffs rather than a marathon game for wargame geeks, Figure 2 - The BattleMail Kung-Fu interface none of the game’s publishers ever advertised or managed PBM play. The PBM movement The game also featured worldwide was fan-driven, and therefore remained more league tables published online. These tables of a fringe activity for hard-core insiders. constituted the game’s persistent state; natural Today, even though board game giant Hasbro competitive instincts encouraged players to publishes Diplomacy in many mainstream retail improve their ranking by recruiting new stores, PBM and PBeM play remain notably players, which contributed to the game’s brief absent from the game box. Moreover, playing but significant virulence. Players could also a PBM game requires that every participant earn special moves through experience, have their own copy of the game, a feat not although these moves added no strategic tenor easily achieved for pick-up players trying to to gameplay. BattleMail was not a twitch game; recruit friends and family. it demanded only push-button dexterity, so anyone could play effectively. While such The ease of Internet distribution mechanical egalitarianism evened the playing quelled such worries for now-defunct game field between and casual players, the publisher BattleMail.com. BattleMail created a game’s total absence of strategy quickly tired series of casual PC games that relied entirely even the casual players. Some devoted players on PBeM play. The company released a with technical skills turned to hacking the number of games on the same platform, game files to insure perfect matches (see including soccer and joust, but their canonical http://noisybox.net/computers/BattleMailCh release was BattleMail Kung-Fu (BattleMail.com eat/ for a typical example). To top it off, the 2001). Players downloaded the game for free publisher’s utter inability to monetize the game and played by selecting an attack and defense led to the product’s quick, quiet demise. maneuver for a round of fighting. The player then sent their moves to a friend via email Despite its commercial failure, from within the game interface. Upon BattleMail offered an important innovation in receiving the email, the opponent would asynchronous multiplay: it integrated the sequence of play with an automatic

5 dissemination system — email — that was innovation this way, “Asteroids was the first already already widely used and understood. to take the idea of multiplayer By coupling casual asynchronous play with a competition beyond one-on-one challenges ubiquitous delivery system, BattleMail that had no consequences beyond the actual succeeded where Diplomacy hadn’t, offering a players. Asteroids' High Score board meant that style of casual asynchronous play that players players didn't have to play the game together intuited immediately. in order to compete with one another, they could compete against a whole community.” Eventually, the high score list subordinated Asteroids and Personalized Persistent Scores single-player gamplay to asynchronous One of BattleMail’s key motivators was public multiplayer gameplay. Instead of a game tournament standings. The game harnessed played by one person at a time, Asteroids players’ competitive spirits to drive the viral became a game played in aggregate by the spread of the game. Persistent scoring is a entire visitorship of a local arcade. In some longstanding, even if seemingly obvious, kind cases, players competed against friends for of asynchronous multiplay. rank on the high score list. But more frequently, top score holders were semi- Early games like Spacewar! (Russell anonymous legends, specters that players 1962) and Pong ( 1972) only played as would try to catch, or if they couldn’t, deride multiplayer games, although as synchronous in with a three letter defamation, such that the multiplayer games; in such games, two players high score list might display something like: competed against one another, head to head. (Bally/Midway 1978) was the SBJ 23000 first game to track high scores across SUX 21500 individual games, but Asteroids (Atari 1979) was Even though the persistence in the first game to allow players to personalize a Asteroids is limited to a set of three-digit codes, high score with their initials. the high score list transformed the game from a solitary challenge — man against rock — to a social challenge — man against man. The space combat gameplay itself became a medium for social combat in the arcade. High score holders felt compelled to return to the arcade to see how their renown had fared in their absence. Playing for a high score necessarily entails ceasing to play so another player can issue a challenge; a high score is less of an achievement than a challenge. Motivated disruptions between Asteroids sessions thus become even more integral to the game than space combat.

Strategy, Agency, and Automatism Giving their games away for free contributed in part to BattleMail.com’s demise. The game’s Figure 3 - Asteroids, the first game to feature high scores lack of strategic merit couldn’t make up for its with player initials creative implementation of an Asteroids-style high score list. What BattleMail lacked was This seemingly innocuous feature ushered in a meaningful personal agency. Player actions wind change in arcade social practice. Game mattered in the context of a specific battle, but critic website GameSpy.com characterized the

6 no single action mattered more than another; desktop computer (HotSync® is Palm’s the game was decided entirely by chance. registered trademark for the process of Shortly after BattleMail made its way connecting the handheld device to a desktop from inbox to inbox, Sony Pictures released a computer to transfer files and data). Players game built on the for the forgettable Jet could challenge friends via a companion Li vehicle The One (Wong 2001). The game website, or, if a player’s handheld profile had extended and corrected BattleMail’s gameplay, an open challenge slot, a game server would offering improved strategic play and a less automatically issue challenges from other invasive player communication system. players of roughly equivalent skill. Since Palm users inevitably sync their devices at least one The game, also called The One (Media or two times a day to update to-do lists and Revolution 2001), was deployed on PalmOS® calendars, the game was guaranteed to evolve handhelds and offered martial arts fighting as long as the player left it installed on their gameplay similar to BattleMail Kung-Fu. handheld. Following the premise of the movie, players took on the role of Li’s character Gabe Law, Unlike BattleMail, The One did not require both players to enter moves and then who traveled between alternate universes in order to track down and defeat the evil version watch the results later. Instead, The One built a of himself (no, I am not making this up). dynamic AI representation of the player, Instead of choosing attack and defense which it packaged and sent to opponents as positions, players selected individual kung-fu part of a HotSync challenge. The game built moves, and therefore had to balance a move’s the AI model for a player from his character’s damage power against its defensive coverage. and available moves, along with a As players won more challenges, their normalization of the player’s historical characters leveled-up, earning new, more decisions in previous matches. powerful moves. The One added a strategic tenor to the basic BattleMail concept, creating a much more meaningful persistent world. By imbuing the BattleMail-style high score list with Asteroids- style personal agency, players’ achievement progressed from their adroidness, rather than the product of luck and quantity of emails sent. The game also proxied challenges between strangers, creating a broader play network that ressembled the Asteroids’ anonymous arcade more than BattleMail’s circle-of-friends. Finally, The One made asynchronous play portable. BattleMail took advantage of email as a way to broker games without requiring special network communications tools. The One took advantage of Palm’s built- in HotSync utility, allowing players to take Figure 4 – Game screens from The One PalmOS-based challenges with them on the road, away from asynchronous their home or office computer. The ruptures Instead of sending challenges by email, in BattleMail’s gameplay were hampered by the The One transmitted them automatically when myriad obligations of the workday. But the players HotSync’d their Palm device with a breaks in gameplay in The One took advantage of such obligations; the game encouraged play

7 in the supermarket line, at the train platform, The mobile version of the game is or on the toilet, and then took advantage of simple enough. In its basic mode, the game office productivity time to submit play results, offers a single-player mode that uses a update statistics, and draw new challenges. The common Scrabble AI algorithm. But the One improved casual play by automating multiplayer mode merges Battle Mail-style asynchronous challenges during natural game PBeM play with The One’s approach to natural downtime. downtime. In head-to-head mode, players cast their move, then drop the phone in a pocket or purse and proceed with their usual routine. Human Intervention The One integrated asynchronous gameplay into the real lives of players, taking account of the rifts and breaks in work and playtime and providing design accommodations that allowed the game to enhance both. An adaptive, autonomous AI made this gameplay possible: players battled representations of their human counterparts. This design decision facilitated the game’s smart use of player up- and down-time, but it also occluded a measure Figure 5 - Screens from Imagine Engine / Jamdat's of human agency. While Battle Mail appeared to mobile phone rendition of the classic boardgame engender agency on the part of both players, Scrabble. the gameplay boiled down to a ro-sham-bo of The game takes advantage of an always-on chance maneuvers, a different, even more mobile network to notify the opponent (or alienating perversion of real human action. opponents — the game allows for up to ten Earlier I argued that asynchrony in simultaneous matches) of the players’ moves. boardgames is largely a functional accident. As Because the game sets the expectation that boardgames go, the popular game Scrabble each player will make moves on his or her own (Brunot & Butts 1948) may offer the most timeframe, the game circumvents the annoying interesting gaps between individual play, if not disruption between moves inherent to the the most potentially maddening. I am an oft- boardgame. And unlike Battle Mail and The maligned Scrabbler, mostly because I scan the One, mobile Scrabble allows human players board interminably, searching for an optimal complete control over their asynchronous move or obsessing over the 50 point bonus moves, thus preserving the idiosyncrasies of that comes when a player casts an entire live games — creative vocabularies, seven-tile hand in one turn. Opponent turns in personalities, and other human traits difficult Scrabble often mean bathroom breaks, email or impractical to accomplish through AI. checks, or even snacktime for the other The One transmitted asynchronous players, who can only do so much preparation moves via HotSync, a reliable strategy but one for their own hand while opponents ponder that required the player to return to a home or their own moves. office computer to consummate the In early 2004, successful mobile phone asynchronous experience. Thanks to publisher Jamdat released a phone phone networks, mobile Scrabble does not version of Scrabble (Imagine Engine 2004) that require any player action to exchange moves. not only solved some of the problems inherent This technological advantage allows mobile to the boardgame but also afforded more Scrabble to correct the primary frustration of sophisticated human strategy than The One. boardgame Scrabble without the need for extraordinary new technology. While N-

8 Gage and Nintendo DS are making expensive multiplayer game. Animal Crossing is an “animal bets on synchronous multiplayer games as the village simulator.” Players move into a town future of mobile gaming, mobile Scrabble filled with cartoonish animal characters, buy a showed that mobile play need not rely on house, then work, trade, and personalize their physical or temporal proximity. In this case, microenvionment. The game offers a series of asynchronous play both advances mobile play innocuous, even mundane activities like bug and revitalizes a classic game not through catching, gardening, and wallpaper designing; radical gameplay or technology adoption, but like The Sims (Maxis 2000), Animal Crossing’s by reconfiguring game downtime to primary metaphors are social interaction and accommodate human strategy. household customization.

The Real World in Animal Crossing While the GameCube does support One of the achievements of asynchronous synchronous multiplay with up to four players, multiplay in The One was its careful integration Animal Crossing only allows one player to play of gameplay into the real lives of players. Most at a time. The game can store up to four player Palm handheld owners are professionals with profiles in one shared town, and human busy schedules who might only find value in a players can interact with their friends or family game during the breaks in their workdays. members who play the game, but only While mobile devices and phones are more indirectly, by leaving notes or gifts, completing likely to offer Bluetooth or WiFi connectivity tasks, or even planting flowers or trees. now than in 2001 when The One was released, The One took advantage of reasonably such synchronous play-enabling technologies predictable breaks in player’s out-of-game still ask players to spend time finding likely behavior, but Animal Crossing literally binds the candidates for multiplayer games, in physical game world to the real world, synchronizing its proximity to them and with similar time date and time to the player’s GameCube clock. horizons for single game sessions. Such Time passes in real-time in Animal Crossing — scenarios may sound plausible among close- it’s dark at night, snows in the winter, and the knit early-adopters of game technology, but animals go trick or treating on Halloween. A for casual players, multiplayer games need to player who doesn’t manage to play before accommodate the player’s schedule, not vice- 10:00pm will be disappointed to find that the versa. town general store is closed for the night, so no shopping or trading until the morning. Since game time is linked to real time, a player can conceptualize the game as a small (or large) part of his daily life rather than a split out of it. The binding of the real world to the game world also creates opportunities for families or friends to collaborate in a way that might be impossible in a synchronous multiplayer game. Since the whole family shares a single GameCube, the game’s

persistent state facilitates natural collaboration Figure 6 - A player goes fishing in Animal Crossing between family members with different Nintendo’s GameCube title Animal schedules. For example, a child might find a Crossing offers a little of both worlds in a truly fossil during the afternoon, then mail it to her unique console-based asynchronous father’s character in the game. At bedtime, she

9 could let dad know that she needs to have it most out of Animal Crossing, players need the analyzed at the central museum so she can take patience to persist. it to the local gallery the next day. Likewise, if the father doesn’t get around to playing until after the general store closes, he could send a note to his daughter, asking her to pick up an insect net during the day, so he can use it the following night after bedtime. As Kurt Squire and Henry Jenkins wrote of the game, “Families (of all types) live increasingly disjointed lives, but the whole family can play Animal Crossing even if they can rarely all sit down to dinner together. When families do gather, the game offers common points of reference and common projects to discuss” (Jenkins & Squire 2003). A character’s Figure 7 - Screens from The Howard Dean for Iowa personality and game options even draws on Game. The bottom left screenshot shows different levels of virtual support (shades of blue) based on aggregate, his or her play patterns. I was surprised to find asynchronous player activity my neighbors rejoining me for being such a night owl. Players who skip Sunday won’t As the number of participants in asynchronous know about the weekly fresh market, although multiplay increases, the aggregate effects of a player who discovers it can send a letter to persistence can become more quickly their fellow human inhabitants — or just talk pronounced. The Howard Dean for Iowa Game about their discovery around their real (Persuasive Games 2003) was a casual web breakfast table. game designed by myself and Gonzalo Frasca and released in late 2003, during the height of Animal Crossing affords its players Howard Dean’s bid for the 2004 Democratic meaningful real-life social connections through Presidential nomination. The game’s goal was casual asynchronous play. By representing the to teach current and potential constituents scarcities of real time, the game creates about the power of grassroots outreach. To meaningful persistence that multiple players play the game, players placed virtual can share in- and outside of the game world. supporters on a map of Iowa, playing one of three outreach to set the effectiveness of their virtual supporters. Game Collaborative Virtual Outreach time counted down to the date of the Iowa Animal Crossing’s integration of the real world Caucus, the first major event in the formal into the game world does more than just frame race for U.S. President. When caucus time the game; some objects or quests simply came, the game ended and players saw how cannot be found unless someone plays at the many virtual supporters they had recruited. right time. Players who miss special objects The game functioned primarily as a that appear only on a specific holiday might single-player effort, but a little-discussed have to wait an entire year to get another feature relied entirely on asynchronous chance. multiplay. After having set the effectiveness of These ligatures do incite player a supporter through one of the minigames, reflection on the passage of time, but since the that supporter worked nonstop, enacting game supports only four players total, the “virtual outreach” to win over other virtual aggregate changes in the persistent world Iowans. In the main map screen, more appear slowly, subtly over time. To get the effective virtual supporters worked more quickly in their region; a circular gauge showed

10 their progress. When the gauge filled, a new game’s design, and a useful lesson. In a paper supporter spawned, ready for the player to presented some months after the release of the place for additional outreach. Multiple game, my codesigner Gonzalo Frasca argued supporters in the same region would work that political games must stand “against together, speeding up the outreach process. gameplay,” for gameplay obscures the rules or makes them invisible, removing the player’s critical perspective (Frasca 2004). Such a Behind the scenes, each game dynamically problem afflicted The Howard Dean for Iowa updated a central server with information Game. about how many virtual supporters the current player recruited in each of the regions on the In a more recent political game, I tried map. Each time a new player loaded a game, a to apply this lesson. Activism: The Public Policy software routine loaded the current levels of Game (Persuasive Games 2004) is an attempt at virtual support penetration in each region. a game-based public policy polling tool. Areas with higher support turned increasingly Players allocate activists between six darker shades of blue on the map. minigames representing as many US domestic and foreign policy issues (the economy, The algorithm for receptivity to virtual education, corporate policy, security, the supporters took these regional support levels military, and internationalism). Players then as their primary input. A numeric indicator in allocated activists between the issues and the game also displayed the total number of played all the games simultaneously. The supporters all players had recruited that day. gameplay changed based on the relative Each night the game reset, and the map importance of one issue over another. Players appeared freshly white for its first player. A could change these settings continuously player who loaded the game late at night during the game. would benefit from the aggregate effort of all of his predecessors. Aggregating all players’ virtual outreach efforts into every game allowed the game to enact its own rhetoric: each and every supporter makes a material difference for the campaign. While Animal Crossing persists arbitrary, quotidian features of the environment (trees growing, seasons changing), The Howard Dean for Iowa Game persists only its most salient feature: supporter Figure 8 - Activism: The Public Policy Game. The colored growth. Thousands of players could interact bars show a player's allocations of activists, and thereby with the game in a single day, on their own the relative importance of each policy issue. schedules, just as thousands of supporters To play, each player had to submit basic could interact with their local communities. demographic information. The game stored The game took advantage of breaks between this information anonymously in a database. plays to show how individual effort could But rather than hold this information ransom become communal effort, one of the for behind-the-scenes analysis, the game rhetorical goals of the game. allowed players to load other players’ public Unfortunately, the game didn’t openly policy plans by specifying one or more clarify its asynchronous multiplayer features, demographic criteria to load (location, age, and and many players might never have intuited gender). In this mode, players cannot change the game’s aggregated representations of the allocation of activists between games; they outreach. This was a major failing in the

11 are forced to play the aggregate ideology of the having your initials on the high score list demographic they choose. comes primarily from allowing others to In Activism, asynchronous multiplay challenge your score. allows every player to contribute to a pool of Persistent state in asynchronous data that other players can enact in the game. multiplayer games offers much broader forms By giving players explicit access to the of implementation than synchronous aggregate performances of other players in the multiplayer games, which primarily focus on game, Activism makes its asynchronous features intricate recreations of entire virtual worlds explicit. Whereas the communal effort in rather than focused recreations of the most Howard Dean for Iowa went unspoken, Activism salient aspects of representational worlds, as in uses communal effort to give players a window The Howard Dean for Iowa Game. (albeit an experimental, less-than-scientific Asynchronous play allows the one) into other citizen’s voices on matters multiplayer aspects of a game to vary from public policy. player to player and game to game. Animal Crossing can certainly be played as a single- player game, and the multiplayer features of FUTURES FOR CASUAL MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCE The Howard Dean for Iowa Game serve only to For better or worse, graphical (and especially clarify and motivate individual single-player 3D), synchronous persistent world games have game sessions. taken over the MMOG category. And while Just scratching the surface of possible these complex “virtual worlds,” as they are examples, in this article I covered classic board often called, have yielded significant play value games, PC games, handheld games, mobile and theoretical reward (e.g. Castronova 2001, games, console games, and web games. Jacobsson & Taylor 2003), games like Asynchronous multiplay extends the EverQuest and Ultima Online require a possibility space of multiplayer games to significant investment of player time and include many more genres and money. Recently, many critics have heralded implementations of games, suggesting a City of Heroes (NCSoft 2004) as a “casual broader pool of player experiences and MMORPG” (Broach 2004, Wrentmore 2004), sensibilities. Such opportunities suggest new but even that game continues interminably, forms of multiplayer games as well as new demanding tens or even hundreds of hours of horizons for MMOG’s, which total play, even if in 30-minute increments. might benefit from casual, asynchronous Synchronous multiplayer games are extensions of their larger synchronous here to stay, and they should stay. But gameplay. asynchronous multiplayer games may offer All that said, what is interesting about new inroads into a true market of casual the idea of Casual MMOG’s in the first place? MMOG’s. Sequential play affords players Above all, MMOG’s are fun for players and greater freedom to choose when to play and valuable for researchers because they how to integrate play into their daily lives, as in experiment with social and group dynamics. the case of Diplomacy PMB and The One. And Virtual worlds are opening our eyes to new such freedom need not compromise the horizons in economics (Castronova 2001, richness of an always-running persistent world, Ondrejka 2004), property (Dibbell 2003, as in the case of Animal Crossing. Hunter & Lastowka forthcoming, Taylor Sequential play naturally constrains 2003), social relations (Taylor 2004), learning play time by embedding incentives to stop (Steinkuehler 2004), tourism (Book 2003), and playing into the game itself. You could play advertising (Book 2004). But such efforts Asteroids around the clock, but the value of focus almost entirely on how MMOG’s allow

12 or require players to exit the real world in Book, Betsy. 2003. Traveling through favor of a virtual one. Virtual world researcher Cyberspace: Tourism and Photography in and creator Cory Ondrejka has suggested that Virtual Worlds. paper was presented at the digital worlds need strong material ties to the conference: Tourism & Photography: Still real world (Ondrejka 2004). But many Visions - Changing Lives, Sheffield, UK, July proponents of virtual worlds still focus 20 – 23, 2003. primarily on the expansion of the virtual, ———. 2004. These bodies are FREE, so get rather than an increased connectedness of one NOW!: Advertising and Branding in intra- and extra-game player attitudes. Social Virtual Worlds. Interestingly, the groundbreaking MMOG . research mentioned above (economics, property, advertising, etc) deals precisely with Broach, Jim. “City of Heroes.” Gamers Pulse, the asynchronous aspects of synchronous May 3, 2004. MMOGs; they ask the basic question, what

13 Law Review, Verant Interactive. 1999. Everquest. Sony . Online Entertainment. Maxis. 2000. The Sims. . Taylor, T.L. 1999. Life in Virtual Worlds: Media Revolution. 2001. The One. Columbia Plural Existence, Multi-modalities, and Other Tristar / Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment. Online Research Challenges. American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.43, No.3, 435-449. Milton Bradley. 1984. Axis & Allies. Milton Bradley. Wong, James (director). 2001. The One. 87 minutes. Revolution Studios / Sony Pictures. NCSoft. 1998. Lineage. NCSoft. Wrentmore, Jim. “City of Heroes.” GameZone ———. 2004. City of Heroes. NCSoft. Online, May 10, 2004. Nintendo. 2002. Animal Crossing. Nintendo. . ———. 2003. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Nintendo. Ondrejka, Cory R. 2004. Living on the Edge: Digital Worlds Which Embrace the Real World. .

Origin Systems. 1997. Ultima Online. Electronic Arts. Persuasive Games. 2003. The Howard Dean for Iowa Game. Dean for America. ———. 2004. Activism: The Public Policy Game. Persuasive Games. Rare. 1998. GoldenEye. Nintendo. Russell, Steve. Spacewar! MIT. Sikora, D. 2001. Programming with Asynchronous Sockets. GameDev.Net, . Sony Online Entertainment. 2003. Star Wars Galaxies. LucasArts.

Steinkuehler, Constance A. 2004. Learning in massively multiplayer online games. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Learning Sciences, edited by Y. B. Kafai, W. A. Sandoval, N. Enyedy, A. S. Nixon, & F. Herrera. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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